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Time to treat teachers with the respect they are due

By Bill McCamley

Guest column

Posted:
05/03/2014 01:00:00 AM MDT

"Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit."

— John Steinbeck

Teachers take our most cherished possession, our children, as their responsibility for eight to 12 hours a day. They instill knowledge and values needed for kids to succeed, and the success of America is a testament to their success.

But recently everything we seem to hear about public school teachers is bad. They are blamed for failing test scores, called out for a lack of progress in our minority student population, and ridiculed for not working during the summers; thus being "lazy." Never mind that tests are not real reflections of student learning, that a variety of factors has made life difficult for minority families, and they have no control over their schedule; teachers have become easy scapegoats for our insecurities about society's failures. And the result is that teachers are not treated like professionals both at their jobs and in their communities.

Truth: Teachers work hard. The myth of the 8-3 workday with a three-month summer break is wrong. They get to school before their classes start, stay afterward, and spend summers teaching, helping troubled students, or taking classes themselves to get better. Every time I hear this fable, I think of David Morales. Mr Morales teaches social studies at Mayfield, then spends extra time sponsoring the ENLACE program for minority kids ... then coaches the girls soccer team. Any argument that he is lazy is laughable, and most teachers I know are far more like him than not.

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Truth: Testing doesn't truly reflect the value of a teacher. It should be used moderately to assess overall student learning. But using student scores to determine teacher pay is insulting. As one middle school teacher wrote to me, "Kids already don't care how they do on these tests. They are 13 years old. They care about video games and making out. These kids certainly don't care if their score reflects well on their teacher's efforts."

And the exorbitant increase in required testing has angered kids, frustrated parents, and decreased the amount of time teachers can actually, you know, teach.

Truth: There are many reasons why students are "failing." According to the Anne E. Casey Foundation, our kids come from families with parents who are more likely to be unemployed or work for less than a liveable wage, tend to live in substandard housing, and are less likely to be offered early childhood education. So is it a teacher's fault when a kid comes to school more worried about their empty stomach then a meaningless test?

Truth: An engaging and accessible public education system is vital to the success of America. It, along with things like roads and public safety, are basic services that a democratic government should provide to make sure that everyone can compete in a capitalist economy.

When finding ways to improve public education we should work with our teachers, not against them. No one becomes a teacher to see kids fail; they become one because they love the experience of touching a young life in a positive way. Let's give them that opportunity to have a seat at the table on how to improve our system.

Would we ask someone with no background in medicine to come up with a flu vaccine? Or someone who hasn't played in college to be an NFL quarterback? Of course not.

But there has been increasing pressure to dismantle public education, and denigrating teachers as unprofessional seems to be part of the plan. Trusting educational reform purely to think tanks with no educational experience and testing companies who want to make a ton of money, however, isn't going to get the job done.

A nationwide study by the MetLife Foundation last year found that teacher dissatisfaction was at its highest level in 25 years, for reasons like constant layoffs, a lack of professional autonomy and constantly being asked to do more with less. If this happens, more teachers will leave and less people will want to become one, leaving us in a situation where our kids are entrusted to a system with fewer, more frustrated people and the only thing they are asked to learn is how to fill in a bubble.

I went to public schools. I can tell you how Mrs. Thomas shaped my love of learning for science in sixth grade; how my eighth grade PE teacher Mr. Shorter took me in, all awkward and nerdy, and gave me physical confidence by teaching me tennis; how I bawled my eyes out at the funeral of Mr. Scroggs, my sophomore history teacher, when he died my senior year.

Why was his funeral packed solid with his former students? Was it because he was lazy or unprofessional? No. People came to pay their respects because he worked hard at creating new ways of learning. Students cried because he cared for us, and we him.

If you went to a public school, you probably had at least one teacher that had this kind of effect. Remember that every time you hear someone mindlessly put down a teacher or the schools. And as a member of the community, help us build a better public school system that will benefit everybody.

Bill McCamley represent District 33 (southern Las Cruces, Tortugas, Mesilla, and Mesilla Park) in the New Mexico House of Representatives.